


How We Got To Where We Are

by Anonymous



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Mass Effect 2, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Slash, Rewrite of Horizon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 09:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Shepard's return isn't something Kaidan's actually prepared for.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko & Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Alenko & Male Shepard
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: Anonymous





	How We Got To Where We Are

**Author's Note:**

> A rewrite of Mass Effect 2 and the whole scenario on Horizon. (Because the Virmire Survivor deserved better than that short interlude)

Horizon is clearly attempting to gain some sort of medal or award for being one of the more frustrating locations that Kaidan’s had the misfortune of serving at. The locals have made it more than clear that they’re not appreciative of an Alliance representative coming into their area – a hilarious notion considering that while they may technically be outside of ‘Alliance Space’ they’re still under the jurisdiction of the Alliance, a fact they conveniently ignore when the situation suits them – and there’s a small group of engineers who seem to have made it their own personal pact to fuck with Kaidan and his equipment every chance they get.

The AA guns should be online by now. The setup was relatively simple, most of the parts having been put together by automated VI worker bots; and the targeting matrix for any unscheduled or unwelcome ship should have been as easy as pie. Kaidan’s been coding things like this for years, and there’s a certain level of frustration in the knowledge that those guns should have been up and ready to go almost a week ago. It’s obvious that someone is performing system sabotages each time he’s away from the control panel because he’s fixed the exact same system malfunction three separate times in just as many days. For the fact that these people are demanding that he hurry up with his work and go, they’re making it pretty impossible to do just that. He wonders if they’ve even registered that nuance, or if they even have the slightest inkling of what could happen if whatever occurred at Freedom’s Progress or any of the other empty Colonies happens here.

Half of him thinks that they think he’s making up the missing colonies as a scare tactic to get them to let him arm them. It’s a stupid notion, but one some people seem dead set on preserving.

Kaidan looks into the most recent data coming from the towers and he almost wants to bang his head against the console. Whoever did this most recent scramble has really outdone themselves. It’s going to take Kaidan at least two days to scrub everything and start from scratch.

The other reason Horizon is frustrating thankfully has nothing to do with the people here, and everything to do with the people back home. Anderson has been surprisingly tight-lipped about these various rumors going around, especially the ones about ‘Commander Shepard’ being spotted out and about in the galaxy. The Councilor keeps telling Kaidan to focus on his mission and to let sleeping ghosts lie. That he’s here to look into Cerberus and the possible connection with the missing colonists. There’s good data that points to Horizon as a potential target and Anderson wants him on site to help prevent whatever is occurring from happening. And all of that starts with these big guns and not with rumors of the long dead Commander. Kaidan wishes that he could say that he’ll do that, just shove Shepard into the back of his mind in a little box and leave it unopened until the mission is done, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. If someone’s running around out there pretending to be Shepard then Kaidan wants to know about it, and more than that he wants to stop it. Shepard was a hero, and more than that, Shepard was his friend. He deserved to get to rest in peace.

“I’m so sorry Commander.” The new Nyxeris says to him and Kaidan makes a mental note to ask Liara what happened to the other asari. After all, Liara was always praising her and her skills every other time they talked. He wonders if she got promoted and if Liara’s missing her old assistant. “But Dr. T’soni is currently out for the rest of the day. If you’d like, I can send you to her messaging.” Kaidan bites his lip a little in concentration as he sets his omni-tool to the very delicate task of separating the strings of corrupted code from the clean.

“Yes please, that sounds good.” Kaidan says. “Thank you.”

“Of course, my pleasure Commander.” The woman says before she clearly transfers him over and he works on a few things before Liara’s private messaging VI system prompts him to go.

“Hey Liara, it’s me. Sorry to bother you but I was wondering if I could ask you for a quick favor? There’s been some rumors about Shepard being sighted in the Omega district and Anderson is being surprisingly tight-lipped about it all. I was wondering if you’d heard anything about it? I’m a little away from all of my own sources and I thought I’d ask.” Kaidan knows that Liara prefers it when he just comes out with what he wants, even if it’s just over messaging. “Um…well that’s it. I hope everything’s going well out there. I should be finishing up what I’m doing soon and if you’ve got some free time, I can see about swinging by Illium on my way back to the Citadel. It’s been a while since we’ve actually seen each other in person.” He pauses for a second as he gets a weird kind of static on the comm line and he frowns as he moves to stabilize the connection. “Huh, weird. So just call me back when you’ve got the time and hopefully, we’ll be able to set something up. Dinner or maybe a movie. Who knows, maybe both if we can spare the time.” Kaidan laughs a little at that. “Like either of us ever has the time.” He jokes softly and he finds himself frowning again as the connection goes haywire for a brief moment once more. “Getting bad reception over here, but I’ll talk to you later. Hope everything’s going well Liara. Until I see you next.” He says before he hangs up the call, looking at the damage done in the AA system and sighs.

“Who’s ‘Liara’?” A familiar voice asks him from the control room doorway and Kaidan turns to look at Lilith who is leaning up against the doorframe.

“Old friend.”

“You take all your friends to dinner and a movie?” She asks and Kaidan chuckles a bit.

“It’s one of the safer things we can get up to.” He jokes, sending an easy smile in Lilith’s direction. Where as Delan and his crew have made his station here miserable, Lilith has been nothing but kind to him.

“Oh?”

“Our usual meetings tend to have something getting blown up. It’s always better if that can happen on screen and not in real life.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“The life of a marine and an archeologist.” Kaidan pokes. “Never dull.”

“She’s an archeologist?”

“Not as much anymore. She used to do a lot of digs at Prothean ruins for a while before she became an information broker on Illium.”

“Fancy place. I hear the asari practically run it though.”

“Yeah, but Liara will be running that place in no time. I have no doubts. The other asari won’t know what hit them.” Kaidan says with a shrug.

“She’s asari?”

“Yeah.” He nods.

“…you have a lot of asari friends?”

“A few.” Kaidan replies, reworking some of the code. “Liara took up residence on a ship I served on for a while. We went through a lot of things together. Makes a pretty tight bond.”

“You had asari serving on an Alliance ship?”

“Um, yeah. We kind of had a pretty versatile crew. Krogan, turians, quarians, a few salarians there for a bit…but not long on those ones. They had their own missions to get back to.”

“You worked alongside a _krogan_?” Lilith asks as she comes in and pulls over a chair to sit next to him and he chuckles.

“Yeah. Don’t buy the hype. Wrex is just a big marshmallow with an even bigger gun.” He says. “He’s a good friend.”

“Your life sounds chaotic.”

“It can be sometimes.” Kaidan nods. “But there’s a lot of downtime between it. It’s nice to have the quiet every now and then.” Lilith nods in understanding as she comes over and looks over his shoulders at the mess that the console is.

“Problems?” She asks, and there’s a small amount of apologetic amusement in her tone. Kaidan matches it with a rueful smile.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.” He says before he attempts to dig in deeper to the core of it all. He registers the overload seconds before it hits and he jumps and wraps himself around Lilith as he pulls up a barrier to protect them as he shouts “Close your eyes!” The overload bounces off the biotic shield and Kaidan looks down at Lilith who is looking up at him with a strange look on her face.

“You’re biotic?” She asks and Kaidan cringes a little.

“Yes ma’am.” He knows from experience how most people respond to the freaks that are human biotics and he’s a little surprised when Lilith just smiles.

“That’s cool.”

“Oh…thank you ma’am.”

“Call me Lilith.” She says and Kaidan chuckles. He goes to offer for her to call him by his first name before he notices the movement at the open door – he figures the noise caught someone’s attention – and he sees Delan standing there, his face turning slightly red and blotchy and a look of growing rage taking over his features.

“Get your hands off of her.” He snaps and Kaidan realizes that he’s still got his arms wrapped around Lilith’s waist from where he spun her around and protected her.

“It’s alright Delan. The Commander was shielding me from a system overload.” Lilith says with a roll of her eyes and Kaidan lets go and takes a step back.

“Are you sure you’re okay ma’am?”

“Perfectly. At ease soldier.” She jokes and Kaidan can’t help the soft chuckle he gives at that.

“Yes ma’am.” He says before he looks at Delan. “Did you need something?”

“The communications array is down.” He says, rage still clear in his tone and Kaidan almost sighs at the obvious signs that Delan is undoubtedly going to make it his life’s work to make Kaidan’s life a living hell now. “Anything you can do about it oh great hero?”

“I can go take a look at it.” Kaidan says, closing up the AA console with his omni-tool. “I noticed there were some glitches a little while ago, but a full system block? That’s…not good.”

“Gonna start fearing the boogeyman again Alliance?” Delan challenges and Kaidan doesn’t even bother addressing him. “Didn’t seem to have any of these problems before you came here pretty boy.”

“Come on Commander.” Lilith says, reaching out and lightly guiding Kaidan past the other man. “Let’s go take a look at those comm towers.” Kaidan follows her lead and she gives him a look when they get outside. “Don’t worry about Delan. He likes to make a lot of noise, but trust me he’s all bark and no bite.” Kaidan doesn’t say how he doesn’t believe that for a second, but he nods in acknowledgment to the attempt to soothe him.

The threat of Delan’s wrath for daring to apparently make friendly with the woman that he’s clearly got a thing for ends up becoming a non-issue pretty quickly. The comm towers won’t come online, not even Kaidan’s back channels through his ship to talk to Anderson and Kaidan’s pretty certain that whatever has happened to previous colonies is about to happen to this one. The intel was good, but because of pointless dick-measuring, they’re not prepared.

“We need to get our comms up and operational again.” Lilith tells him and her tone is apologetic, she knows that he’s advocating for defenses over communication but that’s not his call and the call’s been made. Half of him wonders if he’d fought for the comms to be repaired first if the colonists would have decided on the AA guns just to spite him. It certainly felt like that had been the underlying cause for their choice when they refused to explain their decision or listen to any arguments to the contrary that Kaidan tried to make.

The day of the attack comes quickly and Kaidan wishes that he were more surprised about it then he is, but he’s not that good of an actor. There is something that makes his heart seize up in his chest though, he recognizes that silhouette. It’s the same one from the recovered data images that the Normandy took several years ago. Whoever these people are, they’re undoubtedly the same ones that attacked them and killed Pressley and Shepard and the others. He commands them to run as he tries to take out the strange swarm, but true to form the civilians stand around in a panic before running amok without any real destination or purpose, tripping over each other in their haste.

Lilith is one of the people to go down and Kaidan immediately comes over and helps her up, only to feel the painful sting of one of the strange bug creatures and he rips it off of him and stares at it for a moment. It’s not like anything he’s ever seen before and he makes a mental note of everything he can take in before he tosses it and moves to protect the fleeing civilians.

The only problem is that his whole body locks up like he’s been hit with a stasis and he can’t move. He can’t shout at Lilith to run either when she stares at him in horror before finally being dragged away and he thinks he hears her scream a short distance away but he can’t be certain. The field lasts on all of them a lot longer than any stasis he’s ever had the misfortune of being caught in, and he can feel a kind of uncertain panic wind through him when much larger creatures descend and start making their way through the frozen bodies.

_‘I** will handle this personally’** _A strange, echoing sort of voice calls and Kaidan can barely see out of his peripheral how one of the creatures seems to have some sort of fit, almost like Saren’s corpse back on the Citadel, before light crackles through it and Kaidan notices that all the others seem to show a kind of deference to this new creature.

_‘**Where is he?**’ _The creature asks and the others make strange humming and hissing sounds, but even without understanding what they’re saying he can tell that they don’t have an answer for whoever this thing is looking for. Kaidan watches as the creatures start bringing out these strange pod looking things and immediately, he knows what’s about to happen. This is why there’s no evidence of a fight, they freeze their victims and then they cart them off in those coffins.

Maybe if he can get a biotic barrier triggered then he can push off whatever this is. The problem is that he can’t seem to get the focus to do it. Whatever this field is, it’s playing havoc with the brain to amp interface. He can feel the slight stirrings of it, but nothing concrete enough to really do anything.

The glowing creature points at one of the colonists who has fallen over and was frozen and two of its minions come over and they do something that releases the man from the field. He freaks out and thrashes and screams bloody murder for a second or two before the creatures effectively silence him with a show of violent force.

_‘**Where is he?**’_ It asks again and the man sniffles a bit.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about?” He says and there’s a pause.

_‘**Alenko**’ _Comes from it and if Kaidan wasn’t already frozen, he thinks all of the blood inside of him would have turned to ice at hearing his name spoken aloud by these things. _‘**Where is he?**’ _ Much to Kaidan’s surprise, the colonist doesn’t look at him even though he recognizes the man as one of the engineers who have been plaguing him since he landed.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” He says, his stance becoming stubborn and Kaidan wants to scream and rage when the creatures just shoot him dead right then and move on to the next one, unfreezing them and asking them the same question.

It takes seven before they finally get someone willing to try to make a barter. They’ll tell them who Kaidan is if they let them go. It doesn’t take a genius to know that these things are never going to honor that promise but this person has nothing else to hope for and they point shakily right at him.

They’re dead in the next few seconds as the creature comes and approaches him. Its glowing eyes seem to be taking him in, a slight tilt to its head before it nods. _‘**Confirmed.**’ _It says and Kaidan wishes he could do something, move even just a finger. _‘**Load up the rest. We have what we came for.**’ _ It looks at Kaidan again. _‘**This one will bring us Shepard.**’ _

_What?_ Kaidan’s mind derails a bit. These things are after him because of Shepard? Shepard who has been dead for two years because of their interference? Because Shepard’s dead…right? There’s no way that there’s any truth in those rumors. Joker told Kaidan what he saw. Shepard got spaced, thrown by an explosion, his last action being the one that saved Joker’s life.

Shepard died, and even if he didn’t, in what world does Kaidan make the appropriate pawn to lure him in?

Several of the creatures move him from where he’s been standing into a small area, bringing in pods stuffed with various colonists. Kaidan can’t help but fear for them. What do these things plan to do with them? Why do they need them alive? What sort of things are they going to get up to with them? He’s seen the husks storming around and it terrifies him. He’s seen enough people stabbed onto giant spikes and turned into those soulless, mindless things. He’d rather not see anyone here suffer that same fate.

The amp fires up again with extreme concentration and Kaidan slowly manages to build the barrier, working from his hands and over the rest of his body without them noticing him until it’s too late. Once he’s managed to throw the stasis field – all bets are off. He throws out lifts and throws as fast as he can, putting bullets into anything he misses as he goes through them as efficiently as he can. This is something he knows how to do; this is something that comes as easily as breathing these days. He shoots them, knocking out a few combos while ignoring the pain that’s building in his skull. Now’s not the time for that. He can worry about any damage done from amp overuse once these things are taken out of the picture and Kaidan’s able to save as many of the colonists from these pods as he can.

He can hear the sounds of the AA guns come online, a practical miracle as far as he’s concerned and he makes a mental note to get over there as quickly as possible the second that he can. The strange creatures seem to determine that staying behind and trying to take these pods in the area isn’t worth their time and eventually Kaidan’s left standing as the ship starts to fly away and he takes off towards the gun’s mainframe.

Seeing Shepard in the flesh is not an experience that Kaidan would ever like to live again. He’d never really considered the thought that it really was Shepard and seeing him now, with that relieved and easy smile telling him how it’s ‘been too long’, is like getting punched in the gut by a krogan with a grudge. Two years, two years of nothing and Shepard just waltzes onto the scene like nothing has happened. Like no time has passed. Like his friends and those who cared about him didn’t suffer in the wake of his loss.

Learning that Shepard was with Cerberus was the frosting on the cake that Kaidan couldn’t bare to swallow. After everything they learned – after learning about Akuze and what Cerberus did to those soldiers and Shepard was really going to stand there in front of him and tell him that his own knowledge of their past misdeeds was clouding his judgement?

“I could really use someone like you on my crew, Kaidan. It’ll be just like old times.” Shepard offers up and although his tone is light, Kaidan can hear the soft plea in it for Kaidan to stay. The only problem is that Shepard’s not giving him much to stay for.

Walking away from Shepard is the second hardest thing he’s had to do in a while and Kaidan distracts himself with releasing what colonists were left behind before contacting Anderson. He’s not sure how he feels when Anderson just replies with a soft ‘I know’ when Kaidan tells him that Shepard’s alive and with Cerberus. It feels like a betrayal too, and yet his inner soldier tells him that Anderson must have had his reasons. Kaidan trusted Anderson with a lot…he was going to have to trust him with this. It didn’t make it easier, but it made it able to be swallowed.

Kaidan reaches out to Liara again, and he can see it written all over her face on the vid screen when he mentions Shepard to her.

“You already knew.” He says. He’s not sure if it’s an accusation or if it just hurts.

“I knew.”

“I see…So Garrus is with him and Joker is with him and you knew that he was alive…Does Tali know? Wrex?”

“Tali knows. I don’t believe Wrex does.” Liara says, her voice soft and kind and Kaidan just nods.

“I see…well…thank you for the information. That cleared all of that right up.” Kaidan says and Liara leans a little closer to the vid screen.

“Kaidan-”

“Thank you Liara. Have a good night.” He says before he cuts the feed. He doesn’t really trust whatever he might say if given the chance right now and he certainly doesn’t trust whatever dismay is written on his face that the asari is particularly good at picking up on. They all knew, almost all of the original crew. Kaidan sends a quick message to Wrex on the omni-tool telling him about Shepard’s return but he doesn’t have the heart to do it in a vid call.

He leaves Horizon that night. He doesn’t sleep or stop till he makes it back to the Citadel.

***

“Liara’s worried about you.” Anderson says from beside him and Kaidan looks up from his paperwork to see the elder man standing at the door. He stands and salutes out of old habits and Anderson waves for him to relax. “She’s reached out to me a few times now. Says you’re not answering her messages.”

“I’ve been a little busy.” Kaidan says and it doesn’t sound truthful even as it comes from his lips. “These ‘Collectors’ have technology like I’ve never seen. Those stasis fields were powerful and terrifying. Not to mention the direct telepathic control that one of them seemed to have over the others.”

“It’s all in your report Commander.” Anderson says. “The report you finished four days ago.” He comes over and takes the data pad from Kaidan’s hand gently. “Go call Liara.”

“Is that an order sir?”

“A request.”

“If it’s all the same to you sir, I don’t think now is a great time to honor that request.” Kaidan admits. “Besides, we have bigger problems than Shepard. We need to know what these things want and we need to know how to stop them. You say they’re working for the Reapers, what does taking thousands of our colonists get for them?”

“I don’t know.” Anderson admits. “And I don’t think you’re going to figure it out tonight staring at these old mission reports. Go home. Get some rest. You look like you need it.” Kaidan goes to say something and Anderson shakes his head. “That one you can consider an order.” He says before his face softens. “Go get some rest Kaidan. Working yourself like this isn’t going to change what’s already happened and we need you in top form if we’re going to tap you in again.”

“’If’?”

“You said that this creature called you out by name. That’s far too personal for me to justify sending you in over another soldier.”

“So you’re…grounding me?”

“Just for right now. Take a break, get some rest and call Liara. We’ll go from there.” Kaidan sighs at Andersons words but he nods and gets up, saluting one final time before he calls in a cab and gives them the address to his apartment. Anderson’s not wrong, the minute he actually closes his eyes in the cab and tries to will away the headache he can feel the massive wave of exhaustion wash over him.

It takes him far too long to realize with his slight dozing off that the cab driver isn’t taking him to the address he gave and all the hair on the back of his neck rises.

“Is there a reason we’re taking this route?” He asks and the turian gives him a look like he’s crazy.

“This is the best route.”

“This is nowhere near where I asked for.” He points out and the turian holds up the screen that Kaidan’s omni-tool should have put the address into and he can see that the address is different. Kaidan puts in the new location and he sees that it leads to one of the nicer restaurants on the Presidium.

“Is this right?”

“I don’t know.” Kaidan admits before he sees a message pop up on his omni-tool. A simple message of ‘Please Kaidan’. “…Yeah. Yeah that’s the right address.” He says and the turian nods before he takes him the rest of the way. The person at the host station guides him directly to a dark corner in the back and Kaidan almost expected Liara – this seemed like a thing she would do – but Shepard’s sitting there instead and Kaidan almost turns around and leaves, but the pleading look that Shepard gives him has him sitting. “Does Anderson know you’re on the Citadel?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice.” Kaidan says, shaking his head. “Why are you here Shepard?”

“I wanted a chance to explain.” He says. “Things were a little heated on Horizon and I just thought…I thought that a few days to let that adrenaline pass might do some good.” The waiter comes with some wine and waits for the two of them to order before wandering off again.

“You could have just called.”

“Would you have answered?”

“So you resort to kidnapping?”

“At least I’m buying you dinner?” Shepard says hopefully and Kaidan snorts a little against his own will.

“Yeah, I guess there’s that…. So, talk.”

“I didn’t leave you in the dark for two years Kaidan.” Shepard says immediately. “One of the first questions I asked when I woke up was where all of you were.”

“Why didn’t you reach out?”

“You’d be surprised how hard it is to get a secure comm line on the new Normandy without worrying that the Illusive Man is recording and listening in on everything.” Shepard says with a tired yet wry smile. “I thought coming in person was the thing to do.” He sighs. “The Council was…disapproving of my potential team up with Cerberus, but believe me Kaidan. They reinstated my Spectre status and gave me the green light for this mission. I don’t doubt that if I try to run any other missions after the Collectors have been dealt with, that they’ll lob treason charges on me so fast my head will spin; but right now this is another mission and it’s on the up and up.”

“But it’s _Cerberus_.”

“I know.” Shepard says and his jaw clenches a little as he looks away. “Trust me I know. The Illusive Man is putting on a good show, but at the end of the day that’s all it is. From the ship to the crew to me myself. It’s all just a game he’s playing and I’ve gotta play by some of his rules to stop innocent people from being hurt.”

“There’s no other way?”

“The Council doesn’t want to admit that the Reapers are even a problem. They want to pretend that Sovereign just popped out of dark space like his own personal big bang and that we killed him and that’s that.” Shepard says and Kaidan doesn’t disagree. He’s been formally charged with keeping his mouth shut about all of it from Udina and other superior officers wanting to bury their heads in the sand. “But we know the truth. More are coming and right now they’re taking humans for who knows what reason and the Council isn’t going to devote any time or resources to getting them back.”

“The Terminus Systems are out of the Council’s jurisdiction.” Kaidan repeats what he’s heard Anderson say a few times already.

“Anderson’s hands are tied. He’s trying his best but he can only do so much whereas I can do a lot more with no strings attached.”

“Do you really believe that? That there are no strings attached? That there’s not going to be a reckoning for working with an organization like Cerberus? You saw what they did! You know what they can justify to themselves.”

“If it gets me to the Collector base so that I can stop these attacks then I’d work with Sovereign himself.”

“That…that’s a dangerous road to go down Shepard.” Kaidan says softly. “I know you probably don’t need me harping on you, but sometimes how you do a thing matters.”

“Sometimes, but not when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. I’ve been on the Collector Ship Kaidan, they had enough pods there to take every human in the Terminus system and still have over ninety percent of it still free.”

“You were on the ship?” Kaidan asks. “Did you find-”

“No, none of the colonists. It was a trap; they must have cleared them out before springing it.” Shepard shakes his head. “Harbinger is pissed and we think that their eventual destination is Earth.”

“Harbinger?”

“That’s what it calls itself. It seems to be able to overtake Collectors, give them more strength and strange powers.”

“I remember him.”

“You do?”

“On Horizon. We met, or I guess more accurately he spoke at me while I stayed frozen in a stasis field caused by creepy bugs.”

“Thinking of that.” Shepard reaches in his pocket and slides a small box over the table. “This is the tech that we used on Horizon. It kept the swarms off of us. I thought it might be useful to you and the Alliance.”

“I’ll pass it on.”

“There’s two in there…I’d like it if…I’d feel better if you kept one.” Shepard says and Kaidan toys with the edges of the box for a moment before he nods.

“I’ll have it added to the suit. Shouldn’t be too hard right? I’m guessing it’s a shield modification? Might even be able to do it myself.”

“I just wanted to be sure that if something like Horizon happened again, that you wouldn’t be caught without a way to protect yourself.” Shepard says and Kaidan tilts his head to look at him.

“You’ve read my reports.” He says and Shepard cringes before he nods.

“Yeah. EDI downloaded them for me.”

“EDI?”

“…the AI co-pilot of the Normandy.”

“…AI? Shep-”

“I know, but she’s alright. At the end of the day I could picture a lot of people at Cerberus stabbing me in the back but at least EDI’s down a few notches when it comes to ranking of most likely to do it.”

“That’s…not comforting.”

“You do what you have to.” Shepard says with a shrug. They fall into silence for a bit as their food comes. “Joker says ‘hi’.”

“He could call me and say it to my face.” Kaidan says and Shepard shakes his head.

“He said that an Alliance soldier known to be cohorting with a Cerberus employee could be open to disciplinary actions. He didn’t want to bring you down with him.”

“And what is it we’re doing?”

“I’m not Cerberus, I’m a Spectre.” Shepard says almost playfully. “I get to get around that.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Sometimes.” Shepard says and they fall into the awkward silence again. “Anderson says that your report is what got me out of the hot seat with Alliance brass…thank you.”

“I only told the truth.”

“Thanks anyways.”

“Well…you’re welcome.”

They don’t get a lot of time after that, as a woman boldly wearing a skintight jumpsuit with a Cerberus logo on it approaches and Shepard frowns.

“Miranda?”

“Sorry Commander, but we need to go.” She says before she glances at Kaidan and Kaidan gets the strangest feeling that she’s looking at him like a scientist might a tiny speck under a microscope. Shepard looks apologetically at Kaidan.

“I guess…duty calls.”

“I guess so.” Kaidan replies softly.

“I’ll leave you my omni-tool data. You can message me whenever you want.” He brings up the device and taps a few buttons before Kaidan’s lights up with the new information. “It was good to see you again Kaidan.”

“Likewise Shepard.” He responds and Shepard pays for the meal before going to leave. “Hey Shep?”

“Yeah?”

“…stay safe okay? Don’t…don’t do anything stupid.”

“Hey, stupid tends to just find me. And besides, I’ve got Garrus with me. He’ll keep me out of trouble.” He says with a grin and Kaidan snorts.

“Garrus is more likely to get you _into_ trouble.” He points out and Shepard’s grin turns into an amused smirk.

“We do our best.” He says and the woman crosses her arms.

“Commander.” She says in a slight reminder of some invisible time limit and Shepard nods.

“Until next time Kaidan.”

“Until next time Shepard.” Kaidan replies and Shepard leaves. Despite everything, Kaidan feels a kind of relief inside of him as he makes his way back to his apartment.

…It’s short lived though when he eventually hears that Shepard blew up the Batarian Relay.

_What the hell Shepard? _


End file.
